‘European Motor Drive Vendor Award’ goes to Bosch Rexroth

Eleven leading motor drive suppliers in Europe recently competed for the third biennial Motor Drive Vendor Award sponsored by IMS Research , which was presented at Hannover Fair in Germany in April 2005. The award is based on a survey of “customers’ attitudes towards European suppliers of motor drives,” which assessed each manufacturer’s performance in eight key criteria, says IMS Research. Overall winner of the 2005 Award was Bosch Rexroth. IMS Research is a specialist firm in market research for global electronics markets, headquartered in Wellingborough, U.K., with offices in Austin, TX, and Shanghai, China.

Conducted in early 2005, the online survey drew more than 500 complete responses from users in various industries about preferences among 11 motor suppliers in Europe. The other 10 manufacturers in the running were ABB, Control Techniques, Danfoss, Lenze, Mitsubishi Electric, Omron-Yaskawa, Rockwell Automation, Schneider-Toshiba Inverter Europe (S.T.I.E.), SEW-Eurodrive, and Siemens.

Survey respondents deemed product reliability as the most important of the eight key performance criteria. This area went to Japanese joint-venture company Omron-Yaskawa. “However, in general respondents indicated a high level of satisfaction with the performance of all suppliers for this issue—positive testament for all drives suppliers,” says Alex West, senior market research analyst at IMS Research. The second and third most important criteria selected by the users were competitive pricing and good technical support , where S.T.I.E. and Danfoss garnered the top spots, respectively. It was interesting to note that different drive manufacturers “won” in a number of the eight individual categories. For example, ABB came in at the top in the leading edge technology category.

Overall winner of the 2005 Motor Drive Vendor Award was decided by assessing all eight key criteria, with a “weighting factor” accounting for relative importance of each criterion to motor drive users. “Bosch Rexroth won the award with a strong performance in a number of categories, including being positioned first for clear user manuals, and second for product reliability, leading edge technology, and good technical support, explains IMS Research.

—Frank J. Bartos, executive editor, Control Engineering, fbartos@reedbusiness.com

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